"Goodbye don't mean gone." – attributed to Ray Charles "Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them." – Flannery O'Connor When New York calls, you listen, you go.

Since I began routinely reading Scientific American comments online and in the magazine’s letters to the editor, I’ve encountered a recurring theme: Readers lament that the celebrated publication isn’t as scientific as it once was in the fifties or the nineties (depending on who is writing).

The following is a parable grounded in science with an aim toward Socratic questioning. It’s dinnertime somewhere. A kid pushes a small pile of sautéed broccoli to the plate’s edge and sighs wistfully.